updated 11:40 am EST, Tue February 19, 2008

NPD US Phone Sales 2007

US phone sales over the course of 2007 grew substantially and saw the iPhone register a significant percentage all by itself, according to new data from The NPD Group. With roughly 146 million phones trading hands over the period, Apple's shipment of about 3.7 million iPhones during the year equates to approximately 2.5 percent of the entire market, or sixth place. The top rankings remain largely unchanged from last year and see Motorola leading sales with about 32 percent of sales, down slightly from 33 percent the year before; Samsung gained signicantly, moving up to second place with a jump from 14 to 17 percent of US share. LG dipped to third place with a flat 16 percent of the market, while Nokia and Sanyo held on to fourth and fifth places respectively with 10 and 4 percent share each.

However, Apple's share improves significantly when placed among smartphones, which doubled their influence on the market to count for 12 percent of all sales in the last quarter of the year, according to NPD. When placed in this category, the iPhone represents about 19.1 percent of the entire US smartphone business for 2007 despite launching at the year's mid-point and an initially high price tag.

The iPhone was also fifth place in terms of individual phone models sold during the last calendar quarter of 2007, with two Motorola phones as well as individual LG and Samsung models superceding the Apple device.

Additionally, NPD analysts credit the iPhone with helping to grow the number of music-capable cellphones on the market in the past year. Where 34 percent of phones were capable of media playback in 2006, the number climbed to just short of half of all devices at 48 percent. The number of phones available with removable storage also grew from 22 percent of all devices in the last three months of 2006 to 33 percent a year later, though the study does not include devices with large amounts of built-in storage in the list.

The research firm nonetheless downplays media playback as an emphasis in its 2008 predictions, instead suggesting that most phones will focus on faster 3G Internet access as well as larger screens and a break away from traditional directional pad navigation.

Re: ridiculous

...as most consumers actually care about which phones they are walking around with sense the market has switched to smartphones and at this point,

They have? That's amazing, esp. since another article here cites only 12% of the phones sold in the US are smartphones.

And most consumers DON'T CARE what phones they are walking around with. Not everyone is as all consumed with making sure they're carrying the current "it" phone. (You do realize there are people who buy music players that aren't iPods too, right?)

if its not business then its iPhone, and there is NO way for them to compete with that, not on price or any way else, especially not with gimmicky named inferior imitations.

So what is your suggestion? That they should just not try? Shutter their entire wireless business with the explanation "We don't have the iPhone, which will account for 95% of all phones next year, therefore we are unable to compete with that so we're shutting down our service, selling our assets, and returning the money back to the shareholders"???

I guess you were with Mikey Dell back in the late 90's, when MS ruled the roost and Apple had no chance of not dwindling to nothing.

not bad?

i initially thought 6th place wasn't so bad, but then after motorola, nokia, lg, samsung and sanyo, the only manufacturers left are really the ones who make windows mobile phones like htc and others.

also interesting is that they mention that 3g will be a main selling point over music players, especially when you consider that report by google that iphone-originated searches dwarf all other mobile searches by 50 to 1 (IIRC). so phone companies will be pushing 3g but customers won't be using it!

If we merely take the total number of phones in 2007 146 million and divide by 2 for easy math to compare 6 months worth of phone sales in the 2nd half of 2007 - 3.7 million iPhones sold then changes to around 5.07% of the market_

This NPD Group data is flawed by holding the 1st half of 2007 with zero sales against the iPhone_